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Sporting Life 10K: Lessons From A Tough Race

May 12, 2015 By
Sporting Life 10K - before the race

Sporting Life 10K Start Line

On Sunday, I ran my first race of 2015. It was the Sporting Life 10K, a massive event that takes over 25,000 runners down Toronto’s iconic Yonge Street. I was just a little bit apprehensive going into the race, because my training has been somewhat sporadic of late. I have been doing my weekly long runs, but the shorter mid-week runs have been on-again/off-again. I have done a little bit of speed training, but no hill training whatsoever. As for strength training – well, that hasn’t even been a gleam in my eye.

Still, I thought this race would be fairly easy. My weekly long runs have had me doing distances longer than 10K, and I figured that since the Sporting Life 10K is basically a downhill run, my lack of hill training wouldn’t matter. The race did in fact start very well, and the first 5K went quite quickly. As soon as I ran over the halfway timing mats, though, the wheels started to fall off, and I ran the second half about three minutes slower than the first. I finished with an official time of 1:07:02, which is nowhere close to my best time. In fact, it’s probably one of my worst.

My spirits were somewhat lifted yesterday morning when I checked my race stats and saw that I still managed to come in just a fraction ahead of the middle of the pack. I was comfortably in the top 50% of women, and in my category – women aged 45-49 – I was in the top third. I’m not under any illusion that I actually did well – I’ve run this same course almost seven minutes faster – but these stats do tell me that race conditions were difficult on Sunday.

For a start, it was a lot hotter than I thought it was going to be. I have a feeling many people were caught off-guard by this. Everyone has been training in mild temperatures: being hit with blazing sun on race day would affect the performance of most runners. Then there was the fact that there were so many people. Even allowing for the fact that runners were released in corrals 15 minutes apart, there were still thousands of runners in each corral. During the early stages of the race, and to extent later on, I was doing a great deal of ducking and weaving to get past people who were slower than me. It took a lot of energy and it made it very difficult for me to find any kind of rhythm.

So maybe I did OK in light of the conditions.

But still… I have come to expect more of myself. I am intending to run a 2:15:00 half-marathon in October, and I will not do it with the half-baked efforts that I have been putting into my training. I am a runner. It’s time for me to start acting like one.

Sunday’s race woke me up to some things that I have to change. Immediately.

1. I have to step up my training. I am not going to become a better runner if I’m not consistent about it. Yes, life is very stressful right now and yes, time is a big issue for me. But for several years now, I have been very low on my own priority list. It’s time for me to devote more time to my health. All it takes is a couple of hours on Sundays and an hour on four other days each week. If I cannot manage to carve out six hours a week for exercise, then I’m just making excuses.

2. I have to resume my oatmeal breakfasts. I need to fix my eating habits in general, but I’m not expecting myself to accomplish that overnight. What I can do overnight, though, is bring back one simple routine that was healthy not only for me, but for the rest of my family.

3. I have to get more sleep. I have reached the point where six hours counts as “a good night’s sleep”, and I am experiencing permanent bone-crushing exhaustion.

4. I have to get a sports bra that fits properly. The chafing that I go through after every run is excruciating. The longer or harder the run, the worse the chafing. On Sunday afternoon, the feeling of clothing against my skin was making me cry.

5. I need to make a proper display of my bib numbers and finisher’s medals. Seeing the distances that I have run and the bling that I have earned will keep me motivated and remind me of what I am capable of.

6. I have to regroup, reset and make a new plan. For the last few weeks, I have been scrambling to train for a half-marathon on May 24th. This is a hard thing to admit, but people, I’m not going to do it. I could do it. I know that I have the physical ability, at my current level of fitness, to complete the distance. But it will be with a lot of pain and anxiety, and I wouldn’t enjoy it. As soon as I feel dread rather than excitement about an upcoming race, it’s time for me to bow out. And so I have transferred my registration to another race in the series, and I am plotting out a new training plan that will take me to a fabulous half-marathon in October.

As I contemplate the races that I have coming up, and the new plans that I am making, I can already feel the excitement building in my gut. I can feel that once again, I am going to run for the love of running.

This is an original post by Kirsten Doyle. Photo credit to the author.

 

Filed Under: Half-Marathon, Race, running, Sporting Life 10K, Toronto, Training Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,
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10 IEP Survival Tips For Parents Of Children With Autism

October 25, 2011 By

If you want an autism parent to break out in an instant sweat, just mention the initials IEP. The Individual Education Plan, which is theoretically in place to help children with autism and their families, can instead be one of the biggest sources of frustration. The IEP process, during which the child’s educational goals for the upcoming year are formulated, is about as much fun as a root canal. It is also just as essential. Without an IEP, our special needs kids would be eaten alive by a school system designed to teach “typical” kids who can do “typical” things.

Putting together an effective IEP requires collaboration between the parents and the school, and differing viewpoints can lead to difficulty. The school views the child as one of a number of students requiring IEP’s. They want to get the job done as quickly and efficiently as they can: the less interaction they have to have with parents, the better. From my experience, teachers like to draw up the IEP, send it home for parental signatures, and be done with it.  Parents, of course, view their child as a unique individual. They want their child’s IEP to be given care and consideration. They don’t want a cookie-cutter IEP; they want a plan that reflects their child’s needs. After all, the “I” in IEP stands for “Individual”.

It doesn’t have to this frustrating. There are things parents can do to derive real value from the IEP process. Today I want to share with you some tips that I have learned over the years, both from my own experiences, and from other people who have been through the IEP wringer. If you have tips of your own, please feel free to add them in the comments section.

1. Parents, educate yourselves. Find out the special ed laws in your area. Make sure you know what you as a parent are entitled to request on behalf of your child. Do research on the IEP process. If possible, try to get your hands on the IEP form if you haven’t already seen it. If you know what information the form calls for, you can be better prepared.

2. This is not a battle – or at least, it shouldn’t be. No matter how frustrated you are, avoid approaching your child’s teacher in a confrontational manner. You are not on opposite sides of the table. You are members of the same team, working together for the benefit of your child. If you adopt a collaborative attitude, chances are that the teacher will do the same. At the end of the day, your child will derive a lot more benefit from a cohesive team than from a roomful of bickering people.

3. There is another reason to play nice with your child’s teacher. The special ed community is fairly contained. There is a good possibility that the professional you are dealing with today will crop up in some other role in the special ed world at some point in the future. I’m not suggesting that you give in to what the teacher wants. I’m just saying, be nice. Treat all of the professionals you encounter with respect. Yelling at an uncooperative teacher may get you some short-term results, but it will also burn a bridge that you may need further down the line.

4. Be realistic. Your child’s goals should be formulated with reference to where they are today. A child who has not yet learned how to count to twenty is probably not going to be able to add triple-digit numbers.

5. Instead of requesting goals in absolute terms (“I want my child to be reading by the end of the year”), phrase them as an ongoing process (“The ability to read one- and two-syllable words, with a view to reading simple story-books.”)

6. Remember that kids don’t necessarily do the same things at school that they do at home. My son’s teacher, who is with him for the third year in a row, sent home an IEP draft that included the goal for him to rote-count to 100. I was initially perplexed, because he’s been counting to 100 since he was four, but it came out that this is not a skill he has demonstrated at school. Conversely, he has shown more promise in interactive play at school than he does at home.

7. Don’t be shy about writing comments on your child’s IEP. The IEP form does not allow a lot of space for comments – feel free to break out a separate sheet of paper, write your comments on that, and staple it to the form.

8. As a parent, you have the option to meet with the teacher, or to just add your comments to the IEP and sign it. I strongly recommend that you meet with the teacher. Even if it’s the same teacher for the second or third year, the goals will have evolved, and it can be very difficult to keep things in context without a face-to-face meeting.

9. If the IEP does not include a goal that you feel should be there, be persistent. You may need to compromise on the wording of the goal, but make sure it gets written into the IEP in some form.

10. Remember that the IEP is not cast in concrete. We don’t have crystal balls, and we cannot always say that the plan we come up with in October will still be valid in, say, February. If a strategy or goal that was written into the IEP is not working, talk to your child’s teacher about modifying it.

Filed Under: autism, Education, goals, IEP, School, Special Needs, Teacher Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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Oasis Zoo Run: Outrunning The Old Me

September 27, 2011 By

I was more than a little nervous going into the 10K Oasis Zoo Run on Saturday. I had not run at all since the Energizer Night Race two weeks previously, I wasn’t entirely sure that I was completely recovered from my cold, and there are a lot of hills at the zoo. The old me would have shown up to this race and been content to just complete the run with no real concern for the time. There would have been no strategy, and the pacing would have been designed to just do the distance and no more.

Thanks to the Energizer Night Race, however, the old me was off pouting in a corner somewhere. The old me was not allowed on races anymore. The new me had a goal apart from just finishing the race. And along with that goal came a plan.

My goal was to beat my previous 10K PB (personal best) of 1:05:39. I figured that aiming for a time of 1:05:00 would provide me with enough of a buffer to allow for variances between the GPS on my training watch and the official race course.

I planned to run the first half in 33 minutes and the second half in 32 minutes. I worked out what my average pace needed to be and I set that up on my training watch. I hydrated and warmed up and did everything you are supposed to do before a race.

It felt very odd, standing at the start line with the intention of racing strategically. Runners were released from the start line in five waves, each wave starting five minutes after the one before. I was in the fourth wave, and I placed myself close to the back of the pack to avoid the intimidation of hordes of runners passing me.

Once I started running, I settled quickly into a rhythm. The Zoo Run starts off in the zoo parking lot, and takes runners past a row of porta-potties (the vision of scores of runners sprinting by while holding their noses is a quite sight to behold) and onto local streets for the first couple of kilometres. This part of the race is flat: a nice warm-up for runners before the course loops into the zoo itself for the remaining 8km. Once you’re in the zoo, you are running hills. While the hills are nicely balanced – the uphills are generally matched by corresponding downhills – they still make the run more challenging.

I maintained my pace well enough in the first half, finishing the first 5km in 33:15. At that point, I was feeling strong enough that I didn’t think it would be a problem to make up the fifteen seconds. But then, right after passing the 7km mark, something happened. I started feeling a little flaky. I was too hot and I felt vaguely nauseous. It got bad enough that I actually had a fleeting thought of bailing on the race. I have never, ever started a race that I haven’t been able to finish. I slowed to a walk so I could drink some water (thus making me grateful for my habit of always bringing my own water on races instead of relying solely on the water stations), started running again, and told myself that I would see how the next five minutes went.

Whatever the feeling was that had come over me, it completely passed by the time the five minutes were up, and by this time I only had 2km to go. Despite my setback, I still had a shot of making that PB, and I picked up my pace. I had another weak moment towards the end of the ninth kilometre, but that went away quickly, and I ran the last kilometre as hard as I could. With about 400 metres to go I dug deep and sprinted. By the time I turned the corner and saw the finish line ahead of me, my legs were shaking.

My official time was 1:05:28. I did not make 1:05:00 as planned, but since that had been a buffer goal anyway, it didn’t really matter. Far more important was the fact that I beat my previous PB by 11 seconds. Out of 145 finishers in the “Women 40-44” category, I was 57th. Being in the top 50% in my category, and making a PB to boot, was victory enough for me.

(Photo credit to the author.)

Filed Under: Oasis Zoo Run, Personal Best, Race, Race Strategy, running Tagged With: , , , , , , ,